After our visit to the OSA, we were back on the road again. We were gone from Thursday, June 5 to Monday, June 9, 2008. On Thursday, we spent the night at La Selva Research Station. There we were able to once again take part in eco-tourism and learn more about the rainforest.
Well, how did La Selva Research Station come about? According to Costa Rican Guide, Dr. Leslie Holdridge established La Selva as a study site on mixed plantations for the improvement of natural resources management in 1954. Since its purchase in 1968 by the Organization for Tropical Studies it’s been declared a private Biological Reserve and grown into one of the premier sites in the world for research on tropical rain forest. It is located in the Caribbean lowlands and bracketed by the Sarapiquà and Puerto Viejo Rivers, La Selva is covered with what is technically known as tropical pre-montane wet forest and more commonly referred to as rainforest. There is no better place in Costa Rica to learn about this ever more endangered ecosystem.
Once again, I come to realize how much Costa Rican depends on eco-tourism to help sustain its economy. It truly is everywhere around this small country. The trip to La Selva was truly a wonderful and learning experience. To help explain what I learned on the trip, I am going to describe the pictures taken while I was there.
The first couple pictures are of me while on the hike. The next picture is of our guide who was showing us a birds nest that had fallen to the ground. The red frog above, is called the poison dart frog, because the poison that it creates and how it was once used on the tips of darts during battle. If the dart didn't kill them, the poison would. The next picture is of a bullet ant, which is the largest ant that I have every seen & they can be extremely painful if they sting you (luckily I don't know from experience). The next picture is some of the wild hogs that were at the location. However, they weren't very wild. If you look closely at the seventh picture you can see a monkey! It was really cool to see them because they were loud and would swing from tree to tree. Overall, it made me think how sustainable the entire process of the rainforest is. Nothing is wasted and everything relies on one another. We can truly learn from these different processes if we one day want to live in a completely sustainable world.
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